Thursday, September 04, 2008

Not unlike many of you... I dabbled at "quilting" before I made the quilt (quarter) that I shared yesterday. (The photo was cropped so that the wide gaps where the points should be meeting were not showing.)

I am self-taught... I barely looked at a book self taught. But I did find a guild... On my first night, they had a speaker Bonnie Lynn McCaffrey well before she started those portrait quilts. (Back in the day of kaliedoscopes.)

I bought a pattern. & I made the quilt - complete total abomination - it was paper pieced, I did not know to remove the paper... (No idea what happened to that.)

I guess I have always loved charm quilts - I started to hand piece a hexagon charm quilt. I did not know about paper inserts, but I did have an acrylic template for cutting them out... Without any lessons in cutting with a rotary cutter, I nicked myself up real good - & I did a number on the table cloth too! That project was adopted by someone who will hopefully finish it...

I found the internet & started a mystery... I did not know value from light & lighter (Like my dad's salsa, mild & milder.) So I made the quilt & if you were not on top of it, it looked like a light piece of fabric. (I used that as the back on another quilt.)

Insert: I did other stuff along the way - playing with fabric/ideas that did not become anything or were donated/trashed/etc. Somewhere in the middle I took my first "class" on applique with Karen Kay Buckley. She came to teach at my guild. I was still such a novice & knew so little about applique that I did not know how to keep your needle on the top of the project. (I had been a cross-stitcher...) That project died a miserable death... I was in way over my head...

Then I found Alex Anderson on TV. (When they kind of gave you the recipe to make the quilt that they were showing you how to make...) Luckily I ended up finding the pattern for purchase, because they gave you enough information to really mess with your mind, not to make a quilt - at least that was my perspective as a novice. (Because I got help with choosing the fabircs on this quilt...) (Sorry, I don't remember what it is called or who designed it. Might have been called "Confusion.")Here is a "block" (In quotes, because you could arrange the pieces in any manner.) I arranged them so that the brown would create a border - then I had some extras, so I made a couple focal pinwheels.

P.S. Last night, I auditioned, cut , & sewed the borders onto my quilt swap doll quilt. I also prepared the binding. I also cut the binding for the green minky. The doll quilt stuff all came out of my stash. I previously purchased the binding material for the green minky - so while I did not buy it recently, I did buy it for this project - so whether or not it is stash fabric is a bit nebulus...2 things on my list on things to "finish" before Thanksgiving in America.(I also pulled yellow scraps to send off - yay more stuff out of my stash - although you can't tell.)

2 comments:

Yep - your story is a lot like mine. I was hesitant for the longest time to take a class . . . I knew my skills were awful and I was embarrassed to sign up. I learned enough from tv to think I was 'confident' and then just went to town *s*

I took my first class only 10 yrs. ago and my only regret is that I had not taken a class sooner. My quilting life would have been so much easier. I'm still proud to show off my earlier quilts. After all, they were made by me.